Gábor Sztehlo, a Lutheran minister, arranged for the accommodation and board of 1,600 Jewish children during the last months of the Holocaust with the support of the Swiss Red Cross. It is lesser known that it was after the Holocaust, with the founding of Gaudiopolis, the “City of Joy,” that his humanitarian activity unfolded in its true dimensions. Gergely Kunt's book focuses on this greatest work of Sztehlo. What made it possible to explore this subject is that the documentation of Gaudiopolis was preserved at the Budapest Municipal Archives.
Sztehlo was ordained a minister in 1932. His peaceful and secure life as a minister was terminated by the German occupation of Hungary on March 19, 1944. Due to his good connections with Switzerland, Bishop Sándor Raffay asked him in the early summer of 1944 to contact Friedrich Born, the representative of the International Red Cross in Hungary, regarding the support of the Good Shepherd Committee. The latter organization represented the interests of converted Jews. The Lutheran Church was glad to admit converted Jews as their arrival greatly increased the number of its own believers. It was here that Sztehlo's humanist mentality first surpassed the standards of his church. He considered it morally unacceptable that the churches would try to boost the number of their believers by taking advantage of the situation of those persecuted. In his opinion, the protection of churches should have been extended to all Jews, not only to those who decided to convert to Christianity.
Rather than ending his child-rescuing mission, Sztehlo expanded it after the liberation of the country. He set up his new children's shelter in Buda, in the villas of the Weiss family, which had founded the Hungarian steel industry at the end of the nineteenth century. After the war, the circle of those supported and admitted was extended to new target groups. Many children in need of shelter, originally from middle-class families, had lost their parents. Also helped were families that had lost their livelihoods due to the war or after it in reprisal for their wartime activities and could not look after their children. From the rapidly growing masses of “street rats,” many were admitted to Sztehlo's institution. The focus of the initiative was to educate children from very different social backgrounds to learn democracy and democratic thinking. It was with this in mind that Sztehlo organized the children's republic of Gaudiopolis.
The government of Gaudiopolis had to tackle real-life tasks. The Minister of the Economy made decisions regarding the republic's revenues and expenditures. The Minister of Finance handled the revenues deriving from the sale of the products made by the children. The Minister of Culture organized movie outings and other cultural programs. The children's republic also issued its own money, the so-called Gapo dollars, the exchange of rate of which was tied to the price of a tramway ticket. Apart from Sztehlo, two persons shaped the profile of the institution: Dr. Margit Révész, a psychologist, and Zoltán Rákosi, Hungarian literature teacher. Révész encouraged self-governing groups, that is, children's active engagement in the life of Gaudiopolis.
Due to the traumas suffered, children arriving in Gaudiopolis were initially distrustful and aggressive. In Rákosi's Hungarian literature class, students wrote “compositions on free topics” in either verse or prose. This was another conduit for exposing and discussing their losses and fears. The children then published these therapeutic compositions in their own newspapers. In Gaudiopolis, the difference between children and adults faded away, and there was freedom of expression. This had a special significance in a country where instead of explaining their views, people would traditionally adapt to expectations, bow to authority uncritically, and submit themselves to power.
Kunt also writes about the world-famous movie made by Géza Radványi in 1947, Somewhere in Europe. Radványi's work was inspired by Gaudiopolis; what is more, several of its inhabitants appear in the movie. The fate of the movie and that of Gaudiopolis became intertwined after 1948. Neither of them could hope to have a future in the communist dictatorship that was rapidly being set up. The movie Somewhere in Europe was banned, and Gaudiopolis was nationalized in 1950.
Overall, Gergely Kunt's wonderful work talks about how a traumatized community that is almost fatally divided along various political and social fault lines can be reconstructed. The healing of wounds and the bridging of deep trenches dividing society are only possible through building a democratic society. No lesson could be more relevant in today's Hungary.
